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Our Little Slice of Heaven By Theresa Morin We consider ourselves typical Mainers. I grew up in Whitefield on a 100 acre "gentlemen's" farm and Peter was raised in Augusta, but spent much of his childhood here in Whitefield, hunting and fishing the area with his father and visiting his grandmother that lived in the village. I have had several job titles over the years, from seamstress to solderer to technical support representative. All of which are now gone. After graduating from Cony High School, Peter joined the Navy for 6 years. He ran his own gas station for a while, then worked at BIW, until injuring his back in 1989. He has worked at Digital(SCI), was a supervisor for EnvisioNet and a building manager for Microdyne East and also worked for MBNA. Peter purchased a small one room cabin on a lot in Whitefield in 1985 and lived with no water or electricity until he was able to build a house in early 1987. We met later that year, married in 1993 and over the years we have purchased adjoining properties to total 25 wooded acres. 
We had always dreamed of having our own business. Something that we could do from home that
would allow us a slower paced lifestyle. We both enjoy animals and being outdoors. So we
started researching all kinds of livestock. Peter’s brother, just on the other side of town,
had started raising fallow deer. The more we looked at deer farming, the more drawbacks it
seemed to have for us. It would require more property that we currently had and it was more
work physically than we could handle, so we continued to look at other options. After seemingly
going in circles for awhile, we received a letter from one of Peter’s sisters asking us, "What
about alpacas?" I had heard of llamas, but not alpacas. And all I really knew about llamas was
that they spit.I think my first impression of alpacas was that, yes they are very cute, but I don’t want to raise an animal that is going to spit at me. Not wanting to be closed minded, I reluctantly searched the web for information. Soon we found ourselves in a quagmire. With alpacas, almost everything seemed to fit. We didn’t need a lot of land, they were small enough to handle, there are great tax advantages and they even use a communal dung pile. We decided that some traveling to local farms and alpaca shows was needed to make the final decision. The first show that we decided to attended was in Mass.. Once we paid our admission and walked into the land of alpacas, I knew I was hooked, those big dark eyes and all of the humming. We came home overloaded with information from the farms that attended the show and guest speaker Dr. Norm Evans. We started visiting local farms and soon found how eager people were to help. Each new visit added to our learning curve, while meeting new friends to boot. We cleared some land, moved, gutted and added on to the cabin for a barn. We remortgaged our home, and in the fall of ‘03 took the plunge and purchased 3 young females, 2 bay blacks and a dark rose grey for the start of our dark colored breeding program. The pasture had not been seeded or fenced, so the 6 months of free boarding set us up with a plan of having them delivered in the spring of ‘04. Of course, for us, nothing goes as planned. The fencing was delayed until late summer, and our maiden was just not getting pregnant. Then in July ‘04, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had to go through chemo treatments. When our maiden was confirmed pregnant, I was in the middle of treatment and the dams were too close to their due dates to make the trip home. Although heartbroken that our first crias would not be born here on our farm, we knew that they were in good hands. We were sent pictures of our new boys and the dams were rebred to a beautiful rose grey stud named Avatar. In the fall, when treatment ended, we drove to New York just so I could see and touch our new additions. The trip was a little hard on me, but I didn’t care, I was in heaven. Just being around all of those alpacas made me forget just how sick I was. I think it was then that Peter decided it was time for our small herd to come home. In December ‘04, we got good news, all our girls were pregnant and ready to come home. And bad news, the cancer was back and more surgery was needed with a more aggressive chemo treatment. The surgery was scheduled just before Christmas, and once Peter got word that my surgery had gone well, he rented a van and headed to New York to bring our alpacas home. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got home from the hospital. What a Christmas present! I finished treatments on April ‘05 and by the end of August was strong enough to welcome and were blessed with 3 female crias. We don’t plan on becoming a big farm, 2 or 3 herdsires with 8 to 10 breeding females. With a good business plan and the tax advantages this livestock offers, you too may fit into an alpaca lifestyle. Attend an alpaca show and visit your local alpaca farmers, they are more than willing to sit and talk alpaca. |
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